Most of the people plan for a vacation/trip ahead of time and discuss the plan among their group/relatives. Today, there are sources that help people in getting important information about the place that they plan like to visit; these sources include travel options, hotels available, places to visit en-route, and places to visit at the destination. However, these sources cater to a single person at a time and not to a group and, thus, planning a tour becomes more challenging for the group. For example, a couple of friends, namely A, B, C, and D, may plan for a trip from Delhi to Jaipur. Most of the times, one of them looks for the information associated with the trip. The information associated with the trip may relate to possible routes, such as R1, R2, R3, and ‘sites to visit’ options associated with these routes, such as hotels and historical monuments. The traveler may then explore/asses all the advantages and disadvantages associated with the possible routes, such as route R1 may contain more visiting options than route R2 and route R3; however, route R2 may be the shortest route and, similarly, route R3 may be the busiest route. Depending on these characteristics, the route for a journey may be finalized by the group's consensus. However, obtaining this information associated with the routes within a stipulated period of time can be a tedious and time-consuming process as the travelers depend on known public information or that sought from other people. Optionally, they may choose to browse through various online sources and try to obtain the information.
There are various online solutions available for planning the tour. These solutions help the travelers extract the desired tour information. However, the information is available in the form of a text, a map, and so forth. The travelers may have to find all such information on their own and may be required to print a copy of various maps that can be utilized on the day of the travel to help them navigate. Thus, it makes the available online solutions tedious and cumbersome for people who are not proficient with searching over the Internet. Therefore, the people fall short of the required knowledge and information for planning the trip.
Another important aspect in addition to planning the tour is that the travelers must be aware of the sites to visit and important places such as parks, hotels, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), service centers, gas stations, police stations, and hospitals. Currently, there are few independent solutions that use location-based services and facilitate identifying such options. In addition to the above, the travelers would most of the times like to be aware of the traffic and weather conditions on the route that they are travelling. Similar to the location-based services, there are independent solutions that aid the travelers in getting such updates on a typical Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation device.
Since most of these solutions and methodologies are independent in nature, it becomes difficult for a traveler to plan and execute a trip in the most time efficient and effective manner. Thus, there is a need of a method and an integrated system that enable the traveler to plan a trip effectively and also simultaneously enable the traveler to receive various information associated with the tour during the course of travel.